The Arabs and Islam in late antiquity : a critique of approaches to Arabic sources / Aziz Al-Azmeh.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

ʻAẓmah, ʻAzīz, author.

Series:

Theories and paradigms of Islamic studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Islam--History--To 1500--Historiography.

Islam.

Islam--History--To 1500--Sources.

Islam--Origin--Sources.

Islam--Origin.

History.

Historiography.

Genre:

Sources.

Physical Description:

xi, 155 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berlin, Germany : Gerlach Press, 2014.

Summary:

This work provides a critique of Arabic textual sources for the history of the Arabs in late antique times, during the centuries immediately preceding Muhammad and up to and including the Umayyad period. Aziz Al-Azmeh considers the value and relevance of a range of literary sources, including orality and literacy, ancient Arabic poetry, the corpus of Arab heroic lore (ayyam), the early narrative, and the Qur'an, for the reconstruction of the social, political, cultural and religious history of the Arabs.

Contents:

Divergence of source interpretation: the Methodenstreit

Literary transmission: authors, genres, traditions

Credibility and factual confirmation

Genres, authors and antiquarians revisited: the snares of narrative

Fact, fiction and narrative patterns: ways of reading

Transmission of testimony: the voice, the pen, and the author

The pertinence of poetical evidence

Preliminaries to the use of the Qurʼān as an historical source.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-147) and index.

ISBN:

3940924423

9783940924421

9783940924438

3940924431

OCLC:

869526762

Publisher Number:

99960351601